


I've Got Nothing to Confess

by buzzedbee20



Category: White Collar
Genre: Actually maybe full angst I'm sad, Coda, Episode: s03e16 Judgment Day, F/M, I just wish they could be happy, I seem to do that a lot, Light Angst, Neal Caffrey Needs a Hug, Neal is always running, Songfic, oh no is this a song fic too?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:41:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26265157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buzzedbee20/pseuds/buzzedbee20
Summary: Confession: A formal admission of one's sins with repentance and desire of absolution. It's Neal's turn, and its the people around him who are going to get real. A deeper look at the season 3 finale.
Relationships: Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	I've Got Nothing to Confess

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired heavily by "Love, Selfish Love" by Patrick Stump, and oh, roughly three years after having this idea I've written it. If you want to give that a listen, I'd encourage it.

**June**

_And the stages of recovery can signify your age_

“I think of him as a blessing, Byron and I always wanted a son.” 

It was true, and she said. It. Yes June had lived an elegant life. It had come at a price, and even now, there was no more Byron to enjoy it with. But she had had two beautiful daughters. And now grandchildren. 

The sacrifices They had made for good and bad, had given her girls a better life, and insulated them from the harsh realities of the world for girls their color in the late 20th Century. 

So many friends had been lost. So many lost to their own mistakes, or the mistakes of others. Even Ford, her closest confidant at one time, had not been immune.

Neal knew about sacrifice. From the moment they’d met, she could see in the young man's eyes that he’d had a hard life. He’d suffered. 

Even so, there was a spark in his eye, the kind that came from being young and resilient. She’d lost a bit of that positivity over the years in the mansion alone. When she met Neal it had been getting the better of her. 

He had, for all intents and purposes, changed her life. Every day she saw him in one of Byron's old suits, she saw the same twinkle her husband used to have in his eye. 

It had never left Byron, and though he had been through difficult times, such as losing Kate, It hadn’t left Neal either. 

Nevertheless, the invisible captivity weighed on the young man. She was a mere observer as Neal made increasingly desperate decisions in his life. Time and time again he attempted to service his old life while still maintaining the new. 

He had a big heart, it had always been Byron’s problem, and it seemed Neal had inherited it. 

Though the way he gained the opportunity to be free may not have been completely kosher, it wasn't as if he had asked for it. A good con artist is really nothing more than an opportunist. 

June would know, she’d been an opportunist for years.

***********

**Sarah**

_Less an indiscretion than a lesson I've been paid_

“I went after him with everything I had.” 

It was a simple truth on the outside, but to Sarah, it said more about her, and by extension Neal, than anything else. At the time she first pursued the Raphael and Neal, she had just wanted to clear the case. She had heard of Caffrey and his various exploits; his uncanny ability to evade the criminal justice system. 

It was almost like a game to him, and it quickly became one to her as well. It was a game she’d felt she’d lost until she was sitting on the witness stand, calling Neal all sorts of inflammatory and possibly true things. Anything to put him away.

The man whose character she was assassinating seemed unphased by her, which was the most infuriating part of the ordeal. She’d never gotten the Raphael back, either. 

It had incensed her, the anger of the one loss no subsequent victory could diminish. It had influenced their meetings thereafter, right up until she returned from Argentina. Somehow, the anger had not only evaporated, but become something else entirely. 

Her conversation with Neal in the archives had shown her a side of him she wouldn’t have believed existed had she not experienced it herself. Neal was much more than a slick, shiny confidence man. 

He was that, to be sure. All the same, there was a vulnerability to him, and a sense that he was lost in the world. Besides being unnaturally attractive, which made her take the plunge into what she now felt okay admitting was a relationship with him. 

It had been mostly for nothing, and Sarah had gotten hurt. Neal had manipulated her, and played her against Peter when he’d needed to, and kept her out of every important moment of his life over the last year. 

The only difference was that this time around, she knew what she was dealing with. She’d gone into the thing with Neal eyes open, and even with everything that had happened between them, She felt confident in her testimony. Neal was a con, and a damn good one. After knowing both sides of him, she firmly believed and could say, he was a damn good man as well.

************

**Clinton**

_Maybe just a couple but I'm not quite sold_

“He’s got the best damn deal I’ve ever seen.” 

Clinton Jones had never been handed anything in his life. He had worked hard for what he had achieved, and sacrificed so much for it. To see Neal enter the White Collar division in the way he had, and succeed, sometimes irritated him.

That was all. The fact that all he felt was mere irritation only compounded the problem in his eyes. Neal Caffrey didn’t deserve to be out of jail. He was a criminal. But Caffrey also didn’t deserve to watch his girlfriend get killed in front of him. 

He didn’t deserve being used as bait for a kidnapper that wanted to murder him. And he definitely didn’t deserve the myriad of snide comments and hurtful remarks that were said behind his back by the other agents in the office. 

Caffrey was a criminal, but he was a man as well. In the time Jones had known him, he watched as Neal acclimated himself to his environment, seemingly taking to it like a duck to water. Neal was nothing more than a big kid, kind of a little brother or surrogate son for Peter. 

Peter saw some of himself in Caffrey, and that was what had driven his supervisor to endlessly defend, discipline and defer to Caffrey. In a way he understood. In a way, he felt shafted. Of course Clinton knew that he was an indispensable part of the team.

What he brought to the table would definitely be missing if he hadn’t thrown his hat in Peter’s ring all those years ago. He was there almost at the start of the Caffrey debacle. The years before Neal had afforded him the time and tutelage under Peter that had made him the agent he was today. 

And with that came Peter’s unshakable sense of justice. Caffrey might have gotten the opportunity to end his sentence early, but that in no way meant he deserved it. At this point though, Jones could accept that his boss’s judgement was clouded. 

Peter and Neal had been through too much together for the older man to be impartial. It was Clinton’s job to do that, and he did. Neal was a good man, but that didn’t change the fact that he was mortal like the rest of them. 

************

**Elizabeth**

_I'm not gonna lie like I don't understand_

“When it counts, Peter puts up with Neal because he’s worth it.” 

Elizabeth spoke with conviction. She knew that she played a very special role in these proceedings. She, like June, was one of the only people to have a personal relationship with Neal. 

Yes, he was her husband’s charge and responsibility, but he was also her friend. At times he was her partner in crime, and she his. All good wives have a little bit of con in them, and Neal brought that out of her in spades. 

For Elizabeth’s part, she’d seen a piece of her husband come alive in a way she hadn’t for years. Not since he was first chasing Neal. And what wife wouldn’t want that? That was the fun of the past almost 3 years. 

She was sharing her husband in a sense, but she’d rather share him with Neal than any other criminal, and especially over those stuffed suits at the Bureau. Jones and Diana being the exception, of course. 

She’d seen Neal when he’d thought he had disappointed Peter. She’d harbored him even when Peter had been against him, albeit temporarily. She’d sent him letters and care packages while he’d been in prison, and kept up with him religiously after he’d gotten out. 

She made sure the young man always knew he had a place in their home, ever since his first gambit of showing up unannounced at their front door. Neal had become like family to both her and Peter, and maybe added a bit of spark to her as well. 

The cakes she made him were made with love and good humor, since Neal always brought that with him to their house. At first he seemed to revere Elizabeth, when his relationship with Peter was still tentative. He worried befriending her would cross a line Peter wasn’t okay with. 

She’d quickly dispelled his fears and watched as Neal made his place in the world and in their lives. So of course she would advocate for his freedom. He wasn’t a murderer, though he was a grifter. She knew, deep down, he did those things because he had nothing else to do. 

He had no foundation. Nothing to anchor him to one place, time, or name. All of that changed when Peter entered his life. As surely as it had changed Peter, it had changed Neal as well. Elizabeth just wanted her friend to have the chance to find that out himself. And to do that, he had to be free. 

***********

**Peter**

_All my friends go to the ends of the earth for secrets they don't wanna keep_

“As long as we treat him like a criminal, he’ll always think he is one.”

The statement is simple and clear in its mission. It’s not a plea, and he’s not begging. It’s a fact. Every time Peter failed to give Neal the benefit of the doubt, it led to trouble in the small things, and utter disaster in the big ones. 

When Peter decided to go against instinct, and give Neal his trust, like the night he gave him full immunity, he was rewarded ten-fold. Neal has spent most of his life trying to prove himself to people. Though the shiny veneer of conman tended to blind most, Peter knew what Neal really was, what he wanted to be.

From the time he met Neal, and the young man proposed the deal to him, Peter knew. Neal wanted to prove that he could be just as good as he was bad. He wanted to take back whatever life had told him he didn’t deserve, and he was going to be laughing the entire time he did it. 

But staring at those cakes with Elizabeth, he had to be honest with himself. Talking to Elizabeth always allowed him to say the things that scared him. “When Neal feels threatened, he gets in more trouble,” It was true, and he’d watch the cardinal Rule of Neal get proven true over and over again. It happened with Fowler, it happened with Adler. It had happened with Kramer and it had happened to him. 

Neal did not do well when cornered. He became what he was before, an instinctual half wild thing, with only survival on his mind. He wanted that for Neal even less than Neal wanted it for himself. And now the chickens in the Kramer basket had come home to roost. He didn’t want to call it an inevitability. 

Peter always knew that Neal was going to run. Well, that he would have to. It wasn’t right or fair, and it was something he himself had put into motion. His anger at Neal, while not necessarily displaced, had brought them here. 

“Neal’s gone.” 

Those words, just like that. The words that he’d expected to hear the entire first year he worked with Neal. The words he’d prayed not to hear while Neal was in Rikers, and all the shaky times after. The two words he’d have to say to Elizabeth, either in person or over the phone. They felt like a death sentence, but Peter had to reckon with the truth. 

He’d given Neal his freedom. His partner and best friend. He’d rather open the cage and set the bird free, than willingly have him stolen by someone who only wanted to do him harm. It was a strange feeling for Peter. 

The only thing he could liken it to was the moments he spoke with Neal before he was getting on the plane two years ago.

 _“You said goodbye to everyone but me, why?”_ But Peter had known why. 

_“You were the only one that could change my mind.”_ Neal had spoken the words honestly, from the heart, with real tears in his eyes. In that moment Peter understood. He understood exactly what he had given Neal, and what Neal had given him in return. 

It was those unspoken words, the silent emotion that had passed between them in the falling snow before both of their lives imploded (for the first time), that drove Peter to signal Neal. He’d been honest there, in that hearing, when he said Neal deserved to be free. 

Only, he hadn’t finished his sentence. Like that day on the tarmac, Peter left the most fundamental truth unspoken. His actions spoke louder than his words would have. If it had been the opposite, he would have been heard in his full conviction as he said “Yes. I’m saying Neal should be free. And I’m going to make that happen.” 

************

**Neal**

_This is me confessing:God bless The sad and selfish_

“To wake up, and answer only to myself...that would mean everything.”

He’s crying, because tomorrow evening, he will have been a free man for 24 hours. Neal doesn’t even know what that means anymore. Mozzie would say something about Stockholm Syndrome if he could read Neal’s thoughts. 

Mostly because all Neal can think about is Peter. Peter is the reason he’s on the plane, just as surely as Peter is the reason he’ll never return. 

He’s given Neal so much, and yet still opened himself up to give a little more. Everyone had. 

At first Neal had only wanted to get out of jail to find Kate. He was going to ditch Peter as soon as they were together and go back to talking to him through postcards. 

But something had happened in between Neal getting out of jail and losing Kate. He found that he actually liked Peter. The revelation was like a gut-punch, but it didn't make it any less true. Peter was a good and decent man, and was willing to put his reputation on the line for Neal to have a chance at a new life.

Yes, they’d had their hard times. Things were never perfect, and even recently they had been tentative with each other. Neal knew it was deserved. After everything that happened, at times Neal wished Peter wasn’t so good of a person.

That he and Elizabeth weren’t so forgiving. Twice his past had endangered the Burkes. Outside of Mozzie, they were the only family he had. In the early days, after losing Kate, both Peter and Elizabeth had been a rock for Neal. A fixed point he could return to when things got hairy. 

At that time he was still afraid to trust. He’d been arrogant and angry and just wanted the pain to stop. When Peter lost his badge, though, Neal realized he had to step up. He had to give to the Burkes, and Peter, what they were giving to him. So he got himself together, and made himself trustworthy in Peter’s eyes. Became what he was supposed to be, but for a reason. 

He’d been given a purpose just by being accepted. He was afraid Peter had known this, but his friend never gave any hints of having noticed, and never used this information against him. 

Neal hadn’t lied when he told Peter he’d be ready to work no matter what happened, but he now had to reckon with the fact that Peter had known something he didn’t, and made the split second decision to alert Neal while he could. 

So he was crying. 2 seconds of eye contact and a possible head shake had been the last interaction with his best friend, most likely ever. Neal was entitled to mourn a bit. He loved New York, but it was dead to him now. 

It hurt, it would probably hurt forever, but he’ll take the gift he was given. Peter’s last act of selflessness, in a long line of generosity. Neal Caffrey was a free man.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own anything but the 50 or so ideas about White Collar that I'm finally starting to get out into the world. I really felt a lot when the bunnies came to me originally, and writing this made me feel like I just watched 3x16 for the first time all over again.


End file.
